Priyanka Chopra On Her New Country Single and Shattering Indian Stereotypes

Priyanka Chopra has a lot on her plate. The Bollywood star and former Miss World just released her first single off her debut album, a cover of Bonnie Raitt's ballad "I Can't Make You Love Me" and unveiled the accompanying music video at a release party in New York last night. The video for the EDM single, which co-stars Gilmore Girls and Heroes actor Milo Ventimiglia, is a reflection of Chopra's actress mentality: "I Can't Make You Love Me" is more of a visually gorgeous narrative than a traditional music video, and includes a nod to Chopra's Indian heritage.

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Below, get an exclusive first look at the behind-the-scenes video from "I Can't Make You Love Me," and Chopra's take on breaking Indian stereotypes, making moves between industries, and working with hot guys.

You must be excited about the single dropping!

Yes! It's picked up so much traction—in India we're already at number three. It just went past everything and it picked up so much traction here. I'm really excited because I'm very nervous about this song. It's a cover that's been done by so many greats. My twist to it is absolutely not a ballad. It's EDM, and I didn't know how people would react to that but it's really cool to see how everyone's reacting to it.

You know it's one of those songs that you grow up with—it's a classic that I've always loved. Ballads need to have more meaning than "the sun is rising" and this song says so much. When I was doing my first solo single I should kickstart it with something that's inspired me to be a musician. And this was one of those songs.

What made it right for an EDM spin?

Oh, I don't know. The twist of it, that's what worked for me, I wanted to know what we could do with the song and you know, when we were tossing ideas we said, "You should do something completely different that people don't expect at all with a classic ballad." And when we worked on it and heard it back it was very, very powerful. It's intense. When you see the video, too, it's very intense. And it's totally different from the other two songs that I've done. So my album, all the songs are very different genres, they will be ballads, there's EDM, there's pop…you know, every kind of song because I like dabbling in different genres of anything that I do. Even the films that I do. You know, I do action, I do comedy, I do all kinds of drama. So I think my album's that too, hence EDM. I love EDM.

The video is so beautiful. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind it?

Whenever you listen to songs of about heartbreak—and this song too, if you see Bonnie Raitt's video or the other ones—they are about how you're destroyed in love and you can't get up. And I wanted to change that in the video. I wanted it to be empowering in a way, so the video you'll see there's this tumultuous relationship and two people who are crazy in love but crazy apart too, and they break up. But it's okay. You can move on. I wanted to have that sort of empowerment in the video. Which is something that we've done, so at the end of the video it's just…she's okay, she's okay that her relationship's ended. I don't want girls to feel that just because a relationship ends— which most girls do because we invest so much in relationships—you have to feel destroyed and like life is over, because it's really not.

I wanted the story [of the video] to be sort of vague. I didn't want any reason for why they've broken up. People break up for various reasons. It doesn't mean they're bad. He's not bad, I'm not bad—it just doesn't work out sometimes. So I really wanted an actor as the guy in the video, and the best part of this video was the casting for it. Oh, you have no idea. You should've seen the list we had, all these really amazing actors, and we were like, "Oh my god, who can we get, and when will we have availability." We would sit down and be like, "You know, on the hotness quotient…"

Both the behind-the-scenes video and the music video are visually stunning. The scene where you're throwing colors at each other is gorgeous.

There's a festival in India called Holi, it's a festival of colors, and that's what we do. It's ridiculous. Everyone's drunk in the day, and everyone's throwing each other into color, and swimming pools are like, pink or purple and they have these permanent colors and it takes a week to come off. So you go to work the next day and you're green. It's really funny. So you have to make sure you put on the special oil you get before the festival so the stuff comes off. But people are insane, and everyone's trashed. So by afternoon the festival's done. It's my favorite festival. It's just so visually India. And I wanted to have a part of India in the video somehow, and this seemed so much fun. And there's this other part in the video where you'll see me using Henna. I didn't want to use Henna as Henna, so I'm writing my name in his back with the henna cone. It was a cool way of getting my Indianess in the video, but not obviously.

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Your previous video "Exotic" is a bit more risqué, and definitely shows off the sexier side of you. How is that image of you received back home?

That's exactly who I am. I didn't do anything in the video that was more risqué than what I would do in an Indian movie. Indian movies have evolved tremendously. And of course nudity and sexuality are not as blatant as they would be in a film from here. But we come from the land of the kama sutra. And sensuality is something we've known for eons. And the presentation of that is what's shown in our movies. And for me "exotic" is…when you think exotic you think beaches, palm trees, beautiful girls, hot guys, fun, that's what "Exotic" is. I wanted it to be the cliché of exotic, the video. Because I mean, that's what the song was. So it wasn't risqué according to me, it was exactly what I would've done probably for a song or film back home. And people do that, not just me.

I never really had to be introspective about what happened. Because I was 17, I was in high school, senior year when I became Miss World and my life changed completely. Giving interviews in Europe about the economy of Uganda, and I mean, who knows that at 16 or 17? A year ago I was in high school in Newton and it was like being in Mean Girls and suddenly a year later I was this completely different person. Celebrityhood or show business hit me straight in the face, and I was really young, I didn't understand it at all.

I think I was maybe meant to do this in a way, I really believe in destiny, and I feel like I'm destiny's favorite child in a way. I was just led into it. I wanted to be an aeronautics engineer. I wanted to make planes. And I was an academic. The geeks will take over the world. I believe that. I am one. And going from being a geek to a geek's fantasy is really strange.

Music was something that I have known even before I came to show business. My dad is a surgeon, but he was on stage and stuff as a hobby, and I used to do it with him. So I grew up with a lot of music.

In terms of film and/or music, is there a direction that you really want to pursue?

I want to be able to do everything. And as a girl we're really great at multitasking anyway. So I still am doing Indian movies and I will continue to do so as long as people want to watch me, and at the same time I'm looking for something interesting to do here too. I don't want to do stereotypical Indian parts where I'm seen as the head-bobbing Apu in The Simpsons, I want to break that for India, I want to break that for people from where I come from. No we don't ride elephants. We don't all speak or smell a certain way. You know the stereotypes that come with people from that part of the world. I think it's a time when the globe's become so small right now. You can be living in New York and your neighbor could be from ANY part of the world. I'd like to pave the way for more diversity, not just for Indian people, but people around the world who don't get to come into just mainstream pop culture.